June 7, 2014

MAYBE THE PORN STARS AND AMMO DEALERS SHOULD JOIN IN: Payday Lenders Sue Regulators Over Operation Choke Point. “The initiative has raised concerns in the banking industry. Earlier this year, the Independent Community Bankers of America drafted a letter asking the Justice Department to suspend the operation and target businesses breaking the law rather than banks supplying payment services. A congressional committee last month criticized Operation Choke Point as a veiled attempt by President Barack Obama’s administration to target lawful businesses it doesn’t like.”

Choke point is just a prototype test for a mechanism to control speech and association.

It will be ultimately used against the financial institutions that service broadcasters such as Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levine. Also included on the undesirable list will the NRA, gun manufacturers and stores and ammunition manufacturers and stores.

Yes, it is a big deal. It's a big deal when the government goes after not just "businesses" it doesn't like but after people for exercising Constitutional rights in ways it doesn't like. It's a big deal when the decision to go after certain unfavored businesses and people is made by unelected bureaucrats using discretionary and unequal enforcement of regulations, rather than by Congress passing a law declaring those companies to be disfavored. It's a big deal when the decision to disfavor certain business is made in secret, without the opportunity for public debate. And it's a very big deal when the enforcement is done in secret, with the bureaucrats lying, and requiring the banks to lie, about why the targeted businesses are getting the shaft.

Choke point is just a prototype test for a mechanism to control speech and association.

It will be ultimately used against the financial institutions that service broadcasters such as Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levine. Also included on the undesirable list will the NRA, gun manufacturers and stores and ammunition manufacturers and stores.

And get this out in public for the elections. This is not an Obama "oppression by other means", it is the policy of the DemProgs. Unless their 2016 candidate is a dramatic change from the DemProgs we have now, nothing will change under another DemProg administration.

Nothing will change in any case because the same apparatchiks who reside in the key bureaus (Justice, Treasury, Homeland Insecurity, etc.) will still be there. These things are impossible if responsible American citizens who have not sold their souls to Progressivism work in those departments. Sadly, everybody who makes it to the top in Washington has to pass an ideological background check.

This may not be illegal, but it is a very big deal. What's the difference between the DOJ pressuring banks to quit serving disfavored businesses and a couple of goons saying: "Real nice little bank you got here; be a shame sumptn was to happen to it"?

l'll bet the payday lenders could get the DOJ off their backs by contributing heavily to a particular political party.

Government frequently favors one business over another by various monetary means (tax breaks, tax zones, special riders in bills, etc.). Why not through asking banks not to work with businesses? How is this illegal?

Indeed, you can make the argument that it is simply setting up a special taxing district, where the tax is not geographical, but relational - anyone who wants to work with this bank in this area has to jump through extra financial hoops or can't do it at all.

Why would it need statutory basis? The government is not applying any penalties. A government official is just asking a bank - to whom they have probably given money in the past - to work with the government. Kind of like the government asking software companies to work with them on various projects.

It isn't illegal. The private companies choose to do the government's bidding. Or isn't a company allowed to work with whom it chooses now?

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